Have you ever heard of Reactive Attachment Disorder?
It's a condition that is found in children who were neglected in early childhood before the age of five and never formed a healthy bond
with their mother or primary caregiver. Why am I talking about this on this channel?
Well, I'm talking about this because children with reactive attachment disorder very often grow up to become adults on the cluster B spectrum.
They're narcissists, psychopaths or sociopaths.
So that's exactly what we're going to talk about today at QueenBeeing.com - Reactive Attachment Disorder and the implications for adults.
So let's get started. (Closed captioning provided by Athena Moberg and CPTSDfoundation.org)
My name is Anvie Atkinson and on this channel. I offer free, daily video coaching to help you discover, understand and overcome
narcissistic abuse and toxic relationships. I like to call it toxic relationship rehab.
So if that sounds good to you, hit that subscribe button and let's get going.
So when we're talking about reactive attachment disorder, what we mean by the word
attachment is what happens when a child is given the comfort and soothing and normal care that parents give children.
So for example, when my babies would cry, I would pick them up and I would bounce them and I would feed them and change
their diaper and do whatever was necessary.
Well in the case of a child with reactive attachment disorder,
very often they stop crying
because nobody responds to their cries and the whole reason a baby cries is to get their needs met. So kids with reactive attachment disorder
haven't been loved in a normal way. They haven't been picked up when they cried, their diapers weren't changed,
they weren't fed on time, things like that.
So they aren't able to form that healthy emotional attachment to their mother or other caregiver.
The attachment is formed when the caregiver consistently meets
the child's needs, in most cases parents do meet the child's needs at least on some level and it's because of that attachment that kids
actually learn to trust people in general as well as to develop empathy and to care about other people's needs and feelings.
The attachment also helps them to regulate their own emotions to develop relatively healthy
relationships in most cases. In some cases and a positive self-image,
but of course the absence of
emotional warmth, the absence of having their physical needs met, all of these things, in the first 5 years of their life,
in fact, really, the first 18 months of their life is probably the most important, but the absence of that can negatively affect their entire future.
So we're going to talk about the symptoms of active attachment disorder in children.
They can affect a child's life, like I said from every single aspect.
There are two different types of reactive attachment disorder and they will be called Inhibited and Disinhibited or they will be called
Avoidant or Anxious Avoidant.
So just in a nutshell, the common symptoms of Inhibited Reactive Attachment Disorder will include being
unresponsive or even resistant to being comforted by people outside of themselves or
seeming really detached and won't look a person in the eyes. Abnormally detached or being very
inhibited so much so they don't even show any emotion at all, if they even
experience emotions and then they'll be very withdrawn and they will either get overly friendly or completely avoid other people. If we're talking about
Disinhibited Reactive Attachment Disorder, it looks a little different. They will talk to anyone without any fear and these are little children, they will become
inappropriately familiar with people on a very fast-paced basis and in some cases they may become very picky about who they'll talk to.
So it's kind of a two sided thing. I'll tell you a really great story.
I met a little girl at the pool.
We have a little community pool here and there's a foster family here in our neighborhood who takes care of children who have been abused
and neglected and this little girl really just quickly attached to me.
I was there with my daughter and I was there to be with my daughter. My daughter very quickly...
this was about 2 or 3 years old. My daughter was young,
she was 8 or 9 and she
instantly
recognized something was off about this girl and just went away from her, moved away and the girl would not stop following me around the
pool. She was like, oh, let's go have some girl time. Oh, let's do this, you know.
Oh, let me tell you my whole life story, etc.
And at the time, I was really weirded out by this, because I was really there to spend time with my child,
but this girl was just... would not let go and she was a few years older than my daughter and I felt very
uncomfortable with the whole situation and you know in hindsight,
I think maybe that girl had reactive attachment disorder, because she was so overly friendly and so overly familiar, like
instantly acted like she knew me and that she'd known me for her whole life. It was a really sad situation.
I was nice to her of course,
but it was awkward in the moment, because I was really there to spend time with my own child.
So that's an example
I think of someone who may have had reactive attachment disorder. How many people are actually affected by reactive attachment disorder.
It's really difficult to know exactly how many children may have been affected by reactive attachment disorder,
because of the fact that most families don't ever get help for the kind of problem.
They just assume that something else is going on, so we don't know any real statistics on that.
So how did this symptoms manifest in adults?.
Well, the symptoms are a little bit different with adults than they are with children,
but
unfortunately,
the symptoms really negatively affect every relationship the person gets into as an adult. The way that the avoidant type of reactive attachment disorder
affects adults is very much like narcissist. They have the grandiose personality.
They have big fantasies, big ideas, big dreams about things that are unrealistic.
They also feel like they're special, different, unique, better than everyone in some cases, very much like narcissist.
They may become a workaholic in order to avoid relationships and they tend to see relationships
as just really a big problem, not really worth the effort, something they don't want to deal with in many cases
and again
this is the avoidant type. They often would prefer to work by themselves than with other people.
Like narcissist, they tend to be shallow or vain and they tend to be really entitled, very arrogant and sometimes have
really obvious feelings of they're more important than other people around them.
They see people as generally untrustworthy, unreliable, not worth their time. They, like narcissists lack empathy and remorse.
They have a real problem with authority and they hate following rules and in fact, very often think they're above the rules.
They're over critical of other people and sometimes themselves. They're very hostile.
Their energy just kind of almost hurts you when they're in the same room and they very often display just
explosive anger for no apparent reason or excessive anger about something,
you know something that might annoy someone without RAD, might actually cause a huge rage and someone who has RAD. RAD stands for
Reactive Attachment Disorder. Then when we're talking about anxious or ambivalent reactive attachment disorder in adults,
we're talking about someone who is extremely
emotional, like the highest of the highest lowest of the lows.
They don't seem to understand why they should help other people, it doesn't make any sense to them.
and in fact, they see people in general is difficult to understand. They're very, very triggered by the idea of rejection.
They can't stand it.
They have a huge fear of abandonment and very often act and feel very jealous about many things, not just in romantic relationships,
but they're easily easily affected by jealousy.
They see
relationships as a one-sided deal, not balanced and at the same time they get most of their feeling of security by being in relationships.
So they may actually jump into them quickly. This is of course in contrast to avoidant reactive attachment disorder.
They are very possessive with anyone
they're in a relationship with, whether we're talking about a friend, you know a partner. a parent, it doesn't matter,
they feel very possessive of that person.
This is the type of person who also tends to very quickly
declare their love for another person, very quickly jump into a relationship
like I said. Almost lives for the relationship, they become totally focused on it, preoccupied by it.
They consistently make unrealistic demands of the people that they're in relationships with. They idealize people in the beginning at least and sometimes
long-term, depending on the person. They tend to have a lot of short-term
relationships as opposed to one long-term one or when we're talking about friendships and even romantic relationships
they're very short-term, because for a short period of time they really play off as someone who's amazing,
but then the minute that something doesn't go their way or the minute they feel jealous or anxious or overly emotional
sometimes it's too much for the other person and the relationship is cut off. They feel like they are
underappreciated or unappreciated and they have this tendency to just really give too much in some ways of themselves,
but like
compulsively try to help some people, which is of course in direct contrast to the avoidance reactive attachment disorder with that being said, the
compulsive like caregiving
behavior can feel overwhelming for some people, but it's also kind of what sucks some people right in and if you think about for example,
someone who shows up with anxious or ambivalent reactive attachment disorder, it could also be a historonic narcissist,
they might show themselves in that way. Both of these types of
reactive attachment disorder and adults might also present with being prone to deep depression, excessive risk-taking,
self harming behavior, impulsivity, risk-taking
socially inappropriate behavior and interestingly enough a lot of people affected by RAD do not remember a lot of their childhood.
They have blocked out a lot of their childhood memories and some people report seeing a certain darkness behind their eyes when they are
upset or angry.
They almost kind of go blank
and sadly an adult with reactive attachment disorder is actually at risk for abusing their own children as well.
Of course, these behaviors could occur in people who don't have
reactive attachment disorder and we must recognize that, but if these symptoms are going on and on and on, this person might need to get
some professional help. Often times, these people are labeled as criminals or even mentally disturbed when in reality there just
reacting to something that happened to them in childhood, but in general these people don't have good relationships when they're affected this way.
They can't even fully experience them like someone who isn't affected this way.
They struggle to have any sense of self at all, especially not a positive one and their mental health in general suffers.
It is a trauma disorder.
Even though the DSM says that it must be diagnosed before the age of five, people with reactive attachment disorder in adulthood are very
deeply affected. They have dysfunction in their thoughts, their feelings, their emotions,
their behaviors and very often this can be directly connected to psychopathy.
In fact,
most doctors will tell you that the biggest risk is how they deal with other people in
relationships. That first attachment to the mother is incredibly important or the primary caregiver when it comes to their future
relationships.
Having a
caregiver, a mother or father who loves them and takes care of them and protects them and comforts them helps people grow up and become
healthy normal adults, even parents who abuse us later in life very often take care of our needs as infants,
but without forming that bond very often you don't ever have normal relationships.
Reactive attachment disorder also puts you at risk for various anxiety disorders and like I said, depression, dissociative disorders and of course
personality disorders. They struggle to show affection
appropriately. They resist giving or receiving love, even though they crave it. They have control issues, anger issues.
They don't really get emotions that well, they don't understand them.
They feel lonely and empty a lot and they really don't feel like they belong anywhere.
So can reactive attachment disorder be healed?. Very much like narcissists in general,
it's possible, but in most cases it isn't healed, because the person doesn't recognize a real problem.
This is especially true with someone who hasn't been diagnosed
What it would require is the same thing that we require with any narcissist and that is to seek out, find,
acknowledge and heal the core wound.
They do say though, that it's absolutely crucial if this is treated and
depending on the age of the person and the goals of the person and the severity of their situation,
they usually need to deal with the issues that brought them to this point in the first place.
So if they have any medical issues that happened because of the neglect they need to deal with those. They have to be able to
establish a nurturing, safe feeling environment.
They need to find a way to build some sort of attachment to a
giver type person and they have to work really hard to develop a sense of emotional security.
They often need help with their social skills and treatment would involve giving them certain opportunities to have normal social experiences.
Those are the kinds of treatments that typically are attempted in childhood.
I do know one person who has this disorder personally and from what I understand from his
adoptive parent, this won't ever be fully resolved, according to their doctors,
but he's developing social skills and learning new ways to deal with people and I think in his case,
he might be okay because he has a mother who loves him and tries to help him and she's doing what she needs to do
to try to get him treatment and help, but even though she loves him as deeply as she does,
he has been a very difficult child for her and she's really struggled with him on many levels. At this point,
he's a teenager and he's a good kid,
but he's learning how to function in a way that most of us don't have to, because he doesn't naturally know how to
deal with people, because he doesn't fully understand emotions and how other people relate to him. After somebody is over the age of five
there's a lot of other stuff that has to be done. Therapists and doctors will approach it differently with every person.
This is not something a coach can treat. With adults who are experiencing this and going through this, the doctors will often use
cognitive behavioral therapy as treatment or
reality therapy and in some cases play therapy because it allows them to express themselves. Play therapy obviously is also used with children,
but the very
disorder itself makes it so difficult to connect with and Trust another person which includes of course
their care team and that makes it even harder for someone to actually get successful treatment for reactive attachment disorder.
It's hard for them to develop any sort of bond with a person. They really really struggle with having a natural rapport with anyone.
So treatment is very very difficult. And like I said, well, some people say that it is possible,
it is never easy
and anyone dealing with this disorder is struggling in ways that we can't always understand. Now, does this give them any excuse to abuse you
psychologically or otherwise?. No, it does not. So please do not take this video as me saying, well
your narcissist might not have been loved enough as a child,
so it's okay for you to stay with them and let them abuse you, no, that's not the case,
but this could explain why
someone who seemed to be one thing and then turned out to be a whole other thing is the way they are.
What do you think? This brings me to the question of the day
and the question of the day is; Do you think you've dealt with someone with reactive attachment disorder
and what was your experience like with them?.
Share your thoughts, share your ideas, share your experiences in the comments section below and let's talk about it.
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